Random thoughts on policy for technology and on technology for policy

I have just registered my kid for school in Barcelona, it was an exhausting experience. Basically, if you have a two years old and live in Barcelona, chances are you’ve devoted the last three months mostly to this.

By the end of the process, I learnt what data are most used for decision:

number of teachers per pupil

number of external activities per trimestre

non-usage of textbook in primary school (indicator of openness/modernity)

socio-economic standing of the families

facilities (garden, sport, etc) but even basic things such as windows in rooms (some schools don’t have it)

own kitchen

additional services (e.g. logopedy)

average results of kids in secondary school test

On top of this basic data, most used it the feedback of other parents – provided think like you.

But because of the procedure used for subscription, the fundamental datum is oversubscription rate. You should choose a school that is not oversubscribed, and therefore the oversubscription rate is fundamental.

Obviously, these data are often not available and you have to chase them. I expect soon some app becoming available gathering such data.

But the fundamental point is that these data are not being published in easily readable format on purpose. The argument is that if data, and in particular the average results of pupils, were made available, parents will flock to the best performing schools and enhance the inequalities of the system.

In other words, transparency would create a “rich getting richer” effect. The difficulty in getting the data ensures that only those who are really interested are getting this information.

Is this argument sound? Is it applicable to other domains? What are the main counterarguments? For sure this can be applied to mortality rates of the hospitals.

It reminds me of another apparently sound argument for limiting the openness, i.e. the embargo period for scientific publication coming from specific datasets in order to allow the author of the dataset to write his conclusions. This is also recognized as a valid limitation, but is it really so?